The origins of Dusk — a project out of the Appleton art house most known as the home base for Tenement's Amos Pitsch — can be traced back to 2014. For most of that time, the five-piece band has been playing shows both in the Fox Cities and hundreds of miles away, yet because in the do-it-yourself world of independent musicians free time and money can often be hard to come by, we're just this week getting the long-awaited full-length debut.

"I feel like we're just getting started as a band," Pitsch said at his home studio at the corner of Commercial and Meade. "I mean, our first record is just coming out now. I feel like we're still finding ourselves as a band kind of."

It remains to be seen whether or not the passionate Tenement fans in DIY punk circles will embrace the vastly different stylings of Dusk, which play a brand of retro pop that's pulling from a number of classic American forms.

"We're influenced by rock 'n' roll. We're influenced by country. We're influenced by soul music," Pitsch said. "It's somewhere between all of those things. ... I haven't figured out how to describe us."

Whatever genre Dusk gets filed away in, their songs are immediately more accessible than much of what this crew has put out prior. And, for them, that's part of the charm.

"Dusk offers just a really straight-up rock 'n' roll — or maybe pop in an older sense — sensibilities, where it's just trying to write really good songs," said Julia Blair, who sings and plays keys. "It's really fun to write country rock 'n' roll songs because it's a really satisfying genre, especially with the arrangements we have with the keys and the pedal steel."

Their first gig was at a house venue called the Beatrice in Appleton in July 2015. They've since toured twice, playing shows in most corners of the country, and have had busy schedules during the last two years of Mile of Music. Despite the lower national profile, Dusk has been far more visible to the locals, having played Bazaar After Dark in Little Chute, Stone Arch Brewpub and the Draw in Appleton and Short Branch Saloon in Neenah.

The ability to get in front of a general audience at a Fox Cities bar or festival is part of the appeal of Dusk as compared to a band like Tenement, which Pitsch said has always been a more visceral and physical experience. (Translation: Tenement will pummel your eardrums.)

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Dusk performs during Mile of Music in 2016. The Fox Cities-based band will release their debut album on June 15.(Photo: Danny Damiani/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

"I feel like we're a little more malleable a group as far as what we can do," Pitsch said. "We can play quieter, louder, play in different settings and it doesn't really matter. With Tenement, we're always loud and in certain settings it's kind of awkward. ... Dusk can play anywhere."

The band began as a just-for-kicks mess-around between Pitsch and friend Colin Wilde, who sometimes plays with Tenement and performs solo as Black Thumb. They recorded some covers of country and soul songs in 2014 and, after finding comfort in those sounds, began to write and demo their own stuff.

Blair, of self-described "garbage folk" band Holy Sheboygan!, soon got involved, bringing the demo for a song she'd written called "Leaf" to Pitsch, who at the time wasn't all too familiar with her songwriting.

"I convinced her to use it for us because she didn't think it was good enough," Pitsch said with a laugh. "It's like the best song on the record."

As the months wore on, what first was a revolving door of involved musicians settled on a five-player lineup. Pitsch, Wilde and Blair stuck around and were joined by Ryley Crowe and Tyler Ditter, two known entities in the circles Pitsch and friends run in.

"It felt good to bring ideas I had (and) just see where it could go," said Wilde, who's Black Thumb pulls from past eras' gothic psychedelia and shoegaze. "And it would go way further at times than I could bring it on my own, sitting in my room as a solo artist. ... To have people who are the best at their instrument that I know, to have them put their stamp on it, is really gratifying at times."

The record's 10 songs were written by late 2015, yet the recording process took years (literally). Other projects and tours kept popping up, so pieces of the final product could have been recorded three years apart. That's not ideal — but it all worked out and they're already starting work on a follow-up. One that hopefully will take much less time to turn around.

What the whole project boils down to is a group of musicians who've spent a lot of time with projects that appeal to more niche audiences. With Dusk, they get to write, record and play more pure pop — with the occasional "sappy" song that Blair's best at — that gives them all a different kind of thrill.

Pitsch said if he's ever to have a project with a broad audience, it's Dusk, despite the band having a hard-to-pin-down sound. ("That's the goal — I want it to be unique," he said.)

"I want to carve out a very particular place for us," Pitsch said. "I want it to have some regional value. How can this represent the roots of where we came from and what we're doing?

"For me, I want to somehow represent the place we're from and our way of life, which I think is important in a lot of country music and folk and blues and soul. It represents where those people came from and what their lives were like."

On tour

Dusk will head out for a country-wide tour (plus a couple stops in Canada) this month through August. Scattered throughout are home state shows in Wisconsin. On June 28, they'll play at Summerfest in Milwaukee. On June 29, they'll play an album release show at The Draw in Appleton (with Adriel Denae and the Best Westerns). On July 29, they'll be at the Cactus Club in Milwaukee.

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Amos Pitsch of Dusk performs at Mile of Music in 2016.(Photo: Danny Damiani/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)